First effort with XTrkCad - Llandovery (Central Wales Line)

[Conory]

Hallo,

I've recently discovered XTrkCad and I've been trying to squeeze my chosen station into a confined space. As you will see I haven't mastered the intricacies but I've managed to do enough to work out what will fit.

 

The station is Llandovery on the Central Wales line and the period is late 1930's after the GWR shed closed and the GWR locos used the LMS shed.

 

The left hand side is the most compressed and I don't understand enough about railway operations to know how much this will affect prototypical operations. The bottom of the plan is where a fiddle yard will go (possibly a traverser if my construction skills are up to it.

 

Any comments or advice will be welcome. I haven't even considered the wiring yet (DC only).

 

 

 

 

 

[Conory]

The first drawing had NORTH on the right side of the trackplan.

 

I've now done a version with NORTH on the left.

 

The engine shed is now out of the way at the top left, the turntable will be top right.

 

The platforms are on the left hand curve (nominal radius 36")

 

 

The real platforms scale out at 42" so I'm OK there.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Thanks for looking

 

Julian

[ajdown]

I'm getting a bit confused by the plans - it looks like rather than mirroring it, you've flipped the whole thing inside out?

 

Wouldn't the line from your shed join up with the main much further back than it currently does? Although that may be partly due to the restrictions on your room.

 

If you add in a 45 degree cut 1ft x 1ft in each corner, it won't change the access much but will a) give you a lot more scenic space to play with as you're quite tight to the board edges, and B) get rid of the corners which can spoil the smooth flow on a complex layout such as this.

 

It's always interesting to see layouts based on real places, as others have said, a lot of the hard work of making it "operateable" has already been done for you.

[Conory]

Yes, it is a flip. I'm surprised I didn't get lost turning it upside down.

 

I'm going to have another go using different point radii and seeing if I can get things closer to where they are in real life.

 

I found an article which gives the daily timetable from the 1930's. It even says which portions of down trains are reused on subsequent up trains.

 

Maybe that way I'll get to understand railway operations a bit better.

 

I only live half an hour away from the station so I can measure up the station building.

 

Thanks for the input

 

Julian